Instagram vs Facebook: Which Can Boost Your Business More

When it comes to social marketing, there are many options to choose from. Your preferences, however, may depend on your goals. Each social media platform can help you to achieve a certain goal in your marketing projects.

The most common social media platforms people with digital marketing certification use to reach their audience include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. In this post, we will look at the various ways Facebook and Instagram will help you to reach your prospects and meet your goals in marketing.

As you must be aware, Facebook is the leading social media network with over 2 billion monthly user base. The graph below shows that the trend is on a regular increase since the 3rd quarter of 2008.

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Instagram, on the other hand, has a monthly active user base of 1 billion. This puts it on the sixth position of all social networks. However, when it comes to platforms that have marketing tools, it is in the third position as per the audience, after Facebook and Youtube. Remember ads on Messenger are managed by Facebook.

Choosing the right platform to boost your Business, however, has little to do with the audience. When you are a marketer, you may not want to look at the number of impressions, but the conversions matter more. We, therefore, need to study these two platforms to identify the right option for business marketing.

Average Market Reach

Before you launch your next marketing campaign, you will want to know how many prospects your ads will reach. Depending on whether your business is local or global, you also need to know how far your message can reach people who might be interested in your offers.

Facebook is the leader when you want your message to reach to people all over the globe, including the remotest villages of third world countries. The US and India are leaders in the number of Instagram users. There are more users from various parts of the world also as per the graph below.

Looking at mobile users, Facebook is leading. The messenger app is the most downloaded app, followed by the main Facebook app. Instagram is the fifth of all social media platform apps. Even so, Facebook and Messenger share a lot when it comes to market reach because it is the same platform.

As you have noticed, Facebook is ideal in getting more impressions on your ads. More people will get to view your ads when compared to Instagram. It will help you in spreading your message to people in various places in the fastest way.

User Engagement

Digital Marketing Certification , user engagement on social media is vital as it helps you to get your content shared and liked. The actions help you to get viral and recognized by more users. Through engagement, you also get click-throughs to your brand website and the conversions

Engagement on Instagram

It is evident that Instagram user engagement is higher than any other social media. The reason behind this is that they use the algorithmic method of ranking content on the network. People see the content they would most likely have interest in. This came into effect in 2016 when they stopped using the reverse chronological method of ranking posts.

We also know that people like responding to visual content more than plain text. Instagram, a photo and video sharing platform, makes the engagement easier for all the users. This makes a solid ground for marketers to target their prospects on Instagram.

Take for instance you want to showcase your fashion, landscaping, or photography business online, Instagram would be your best choice. You only need to upload your samples and include a tagline that speaks about your business. Using hashtags can also suffice.

Another fact about Instagram in engagement revolves around the Instagram “stories” people create. With a 37% Instagram impression rate coming from the stories, you can be sure to boost your business on Instagram by publishing on your stories (like WhatsApp status).

But remember that stories cannot be shared with other users, so, you need more followers on Instagram to get the best out of your stories. If you need to get your content shareable, use the Instagram posts to reach more audience.

Engagement on Facebook

On Facebook, user engagement may not be as good as it is on Instagram, but it is not the worst either. It comes in the second position when compared with all other social media networks. Measuring the engagement rate of your posts on Facebook is vital when making decisions.

A 1-2% engagement rate on Facebook is already good in performance. Simply put, if your brand page has 10k followers, 200 engagements on your posts are good to go. But you also need to work harder to get more if you want your business to grow.

Some not so good news posted on Forbes in August 2018 indicates that there has been a steep decline in the engagement rate on Facebook for the previous 18 months. To be precise, the drop was beyond 50%. This has caused much negative impact on businesses that rely on the engagements to grow their brands. But remember that Facebook still sticks on the second position in user engagement.

Demographics

One advantage of using social media for marketing is that you have the options as to whom to target. The targeting depends on the demographics of users. For instance, you need to target a particular age group, gender, origin/location, etc.

Looking at Facebook, you will realize that it is a popular platform among adults. There are also more female users than males on Facebook, precisely 53% to 47% ratio. 85% of users on Facebook are from outside the US.

Instagram is the first social media platform that revolves around visual content. This has attracted more youths than Facebook. The largest part of Instagram users is the youth between the ages of 18 and 34 who make 62% of all users. This means you can expect more conversions from Instagram if your business targets the youth.

According to Statistica, there is an almost even usage of Instagram among men and women. There are 50.3% female users compared to 49.7% of males who are active on the platform. There is a likelihood of getting similar results when targeting males or females on Instagram.

Content Distribution

As you might be aware, Instagram has limits when you want to share your content. Linking to your content source is something of value when creating social media posts. This case cannot be satisfied on Instagram, because you can only have one link on your profile bio. Posts cannot link out to blogs. You only have the option of adding captions to your images.

Facebook, however, gives you the freedom to post as many links to your landing and product pages. In regard to this, you get the ability to create a solid and credible standing on Facebook for your brand.

Conclusion

Whatever your needs are, you have the option to choose the best platform that will guarantee you the best results. It is, therefore, necessary to put everything together and consider your goals before you start your social media marketing. You will definitely get something valuable from both platforms depending on your needs.

Harold is a marketing enthusiast and an influencer in Different verticals. She keeps a special interest in the impact of visual branding on business growth. She has been writing for a long time now and has an interest in traveling as well.